COLOMBIA'S WORRISOME BLANK CHECK

If his administration's budget proposal is any indication, President
Bush appears to be moving boldly to establish an outright and
unabridged military relationship with Colombia - exactly the kind
Washington so long sought to avoid.

The White House sent Congress a budget for the next fiscal year that
includes a request for $110 million in good old-fashioned military
assistance for the Andean nation. Unlike last year's aid, the money
wouldn't be tied to a particular effort or locale. Rather, the
Colombian military could use the funds for whatever counterterrorism
effort it targeted in whatever part of the country. That isn't exactly
a blank check, but it is pretty close.

In terms of dollars, the increase is only 15 percent. But in fact,
Washington seems to be signaling that the time has come to lift
restrictions on such expenditures and give the Colombian military a
hefty vote of confidence. That would amount to a radical change in
U.S. policy at a time when Colombia already is the recipient of the
highest level of Washington's security aid in the region since the
Cold War.

It was just a year ago that U.S. officials began to move the terms of
the debate about Colombia from drugs to terrorism. Then, five months
ago, what had been unimaginable for years was written into law: U.S.
aid intended to fight drugs could be used to fight insurgents. The
distinction between dollars against drugs and dollars to counter
"terrorists" is an important one. The difference evolved over
considerable time, and losing sight of that lengthy and complicated
process could make the path that Washington and Bogota now follow even
more perilous.

Colombia's conflict is a complex, violent morass of anti-government
leftist rebels and right-wing militias - both financed by lucrative
illegal activities and all confronted by weak legitimate security
forces. There are those in Washington who have yearned to jump in and
help for years. But recognition of the complexities has limited the
U.S. role.

For a long time, any talk of increasing U.S. security aid to Colombia
was countered by persistent voices in Washington warning about mission
creep or a military quagmire. In the post-Sept. 11 environment, those
voices would seem harder to hear over the shouts for a global war on
terror.

Democratic congressional sources warned the other day that, unlike
last year, the coming debate over the issue could find more in
Congress determined to question the Bush administration's proposal to
combine the anti-drugs and anti-terrorism campaigns in Colombia. But
it won't be easy to be opposed to a war against Colombian
anti-government guerrillas, some of whose tactics are easily likened
to those of al-Qaeda.

Indeed, the conflict in Colombia seems to have worsened in recent
weeks. Many fear it is only a question of when, not if, key elements
of U.S. aid - men or materiel or both - will become targets
themselves. Any such casualties wouldn't be easily accepted here,
especially when many have yet to overcome a popular notion that
Colombia itself has been unwilling to bear the burden of its own war.

The strongest remaining resistance to move beyond anti-drug aid to
more carte blanche military assistance comes from human rights
advocates concerned with the Colombian military's association with
brutal right-wing paramilitary groups. To them, such links warrant
punishment, not reward.

In Mr. Bush's new black-and-white world of counterterrorism,
Washington risks ignoring the gray areas that made it reluctant to do
more in Colombia for so long. The challenge for those still willing to
raise the tough questions about the administration's policy is to find
a way to do so without being dismissed as being stuck in the past or,
worse, aligned with the enemy.